1835.] SALT-LAhE. 377 
While staying in this upper region, we lived entirely upon tortoise- 
meat: the breast-plate roasted (as the Gauchos do carne con cuero), 
with tle flesh on it, is very good; and the young tortoises make 
excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent. 
One day we accompanied a party of the Spaniards in their 
whale-boat to a salina, or lake from which salt is procured. 
After landing, we had a very rough walk over a rugged field of 
recent lava, which has almost surrounded a tuff-crater, at the 
bottom of which the salt-lake lies. The water is only three or 
four inches deep, and rests on a layer of beautifully crystallized, 
white salt. The lake is quite circular, and is fringed with a border 
of bright green succulent plants; the almost precipitous walls of 
the crater are clothed with wood, so that the scene was altogether 
both picturesque and curious. A few years since, the sailors 
belonging to a sealing-vessel murdered their captain in this quiet 
spot; and we saw his skull lying among the bushes. 
During the greater part of our stay of a week, the sky was 
cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour, the heat be- 
came very oppressive. On two days, the thermometer within 
the tent stood for some hours at 98°; but in the open air, in the 
wind and sun, at only 85°. The sand was extremely hot; the 
thermometer placed in some of a brown colour immediately rose 
to 187°, and how much above that it would have risen, I do not 
know, for it was not graduated any higher. The black sand felt 
much hotter, so that even in thick boots it was quite disagreeable 
to walk over it. 
The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and 
well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are 
aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a differ- 
ence between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all 
show a marked relationship with those of America, though sepa- 
rated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 
500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world 
within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence 
it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general 
character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small 
size of these islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of 
their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every 
